Episode 9: To My Future Self
Plot: Having given up on his dreams of becoming a manga artist long ago, a man finds a DVD from his past self among the junk in his apartment. When he watches it, his past self wishes his future self luck on achieving his dreams, but when he admits to the screen that he failed in his dreams, the DVD malfunctions. After that, the man believes he has been cursed by the DVD.
Breakdown: Man, what a weird way to encourage people to never give up on their dreams.
Okay, that’s probably not the real message. The real message is probably more akin to “Don’t bully people or otherwise be a crappy person” but this one took me for more of a ride than I expected. It was heading down a somewhat predictable path. I thought that the man’s history would slowly start erasing after he became cursed. Or he’d disappear because his past self was unhappy with learning about his future and would ensure that wouldn’t happen. However, it took a sharp left turn towards an ending I never expected.
People kept touting this as being the best episode so far, and I’m not sure I agree with that. It was certainly good, but I think they were too in-your-face with the scary faces. Yami Shibai might get some shit sometimes for not showing enough, but here I think they showed a bit too much. When the first jump-scary shots popped up, I didn’t get in the least bit scared or even surprised. They pretty much warned you of the jump scare before it happened by showing the creepy person walking in the foreground.
The scary atmosphere was constructed entirely by the story, if you ask me.
Episode 10: The Other Building
Plot: An ill man who has been hospitalized keeps trying to push his physical therapy too far at night behind everyone’s backs to help him get well enough to go to work. One night, he believes he spots another building to the hospital that should exist filled with creepy patients, but no one believes him. What is this other building?
Breakdown: This one was okay. May or may not be the weakest of the season. It was just a bit too easy to figure out the twist here, and the main character was a bit too dumb for my liking. He keeps seeing monsters and strange visions before passing out whenever he goes out at night, but he doesn’t think, hey, maybe it’s a good idea to just not go out at night. Or, at the very least, if you do go out at night, don’t go beyond where the salt is because that’s always where the trouble starts.
The imagery was fairly spooky, and, for some reason, this episode certainly had the most animation I’ve ever seen in this show. Like it was actually….ya know….animated. It’s was obviously still very rough animation, but it was a lot more than the typical level we normally get and I don’t know why.
You want to know something very strange? Throughout this entire episode, I was getting severe deja vu. I’d swear I’ve seen this episode or a very similar story somewhere before, but, for the life of me, I can’t remember where. Does anyone know what I’m thinking of? Am I crazy?
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The Anime Madhouse 